Thorp Air Command - T18.net

So it's only 50 days until the start of the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Outback Air Race 2018 which I have enter my Thorp into. I thought some of you might be interested in following us and the event as we travel around most of Australia in support of a worthy Australia Charity. In case there is anyone out there that is interested in helping us support this charity you can find details on donating at http://www.TeamSkippy.com.au

So what is the Outback Air Race? For those that have not heard of it before the Air Race is a GPS-based navigation time trial where each team elects the time it will take them to fly between two visual points. They are then scored for how close they are to the elected time and how close they pass to the two visual points.

A good video that sums up the event has been put out by the event organisers:



This year the event is from Archerfield, Queensland (Near Brisbane) to Broome, Western Australia via some of the most remote towns in Australia. For those of you that do not know where these places are I have attached a picture of the race route below and will add a picture of our route once finalised. The race is over the course of 2 weeks and covers approximately 2125nm.



So I guess I should also mention a bit about my Thorp. My Thorp T18 was nicknamed by the previous owner (and previous forum member "Grothy") "Skippy". Built in 1977, he has just over 1000 hours flight time in the 40 years since the first flight. He is powered by a Lycoming O-320 150 hp which usually gives a cruise speed of 140 knots at 35 L/hr (9.25 Gal/hr) at low levels or closer to 28 L/hr (7.4 Gal/hr) when on oxygen at 13500ft+. As a lot of you would know, the Thorp does not have a great range which means it will take us approximately 14 hours to get back to the Barossa Valley in South Australia due to the extra stops.

If there is any interest in this event I will keep the thread updated as we progress and as work is undertaken on Skippy. Again if you want to help us support the worthy Australian charity that helps thousands of patients throughout regional Australia every year, please visit our fundraising page at http://www.TeamSkippy.com.au

Well that's pretty cool.
Cubes

I never knew how BIG Australia is until I flew from Papa New Guinea to Brisbane . Most of the flight over AUS was done with HF radio . Pics and a flight progress would be interesting !

RB

To put into perspective how big Australia is here is a picture of our current most likely route.



As you can see our current distance is 4908nm and we're not even visiting all of Australia!

Well the Air Race is over. Sadly we only came 19th but as anyone that has visited Australia would know the scenery & experience was amazing! Instead of spamming the forums with a couple of all the blog posts, anyone that is interested in reading about the race or viewing the hundreds of pictures from the event, you can view it all at http://www.TeamSkippy.com.au.

Hopefully this is the first of many big trips for my little Thorp!

That looks fun. How do the race organizers determine the time you crossed the start/end point and the distance you actually missed flying directly over your start/end point?

The time and distances were recorded by a gps tracker in each of the aircraft. The recorded log/route was then used to calculate the time interval and the distance from the point and then scores were awarded based on these results. Our best was about 7 meters (23 feet) from one of the points but some teams had it down to 2 meters (6.56 feet). It's hard to know exactly how we did as a lot of the scoring information wasn't released to the teams but quite a few of the teams were within a second of their elected times. Not bad when some of the legs were 400 nautical miles+.

Wow. Congrats
Cubes

Quite a feat even if it wasn't a race !

RB